Girls with Balls (2018)

This has been in my Netflix queue for a while, so I finally hit play. This French horror/comedy flick follows a girls’ volleyball team named the Falcons. After winning the “championship” they are basically chased out of town by an angry crowd. Making their escape in an RV we get to meet the quirky oddball group of characters. Once that is established, they get lost, run into some French Hillbillies (really that is a thing!), and get hunted by them. 

That might seem like an oversimplification or possibly sounds like I didn’t like Girls with Balls… well that sentence sounds weird… but that isn’t the case. I’ve mentioned in the past that I don’t believe or require every horror movie to break new ground or show me some twist. If it is executed decently, I can get behind a formulaic horror flick. With a run time of seventy seven minutes the movie wastes no time establishing the characters well enough that they are distinguishable from each other. That way it is easier to track who gets killed and who lives. Now I can’t say that I was rooting for any of them particularly, but I didn’t hate them either. 

The hunters/hillbillies are pretty much interchangeable. These are inbred mutants or anything like that. Just local folks that probably need to improve their hygiene. They basically serve two purposes in the story. One to act as a foil for the actresses playing the volleyball team to react to and the other is to pad the body count with some funny “fighting back” kills. It isn’t just the team that gets decimated in this flick and that was part of the fun! The most memorable of the killers has to be their vicious attack Chihuahua! Yeah you read that last line right. 

Though viewer be warned. As pretty as the girls are the humor is equally as raunchy. This is especially so if you leave the original French audio and read the subtitles. I feel like the dub tries to soften some of the jokes to avoid offending the more sensitive English speaking audience. In addition to some funny lines, we also get some bodily function jokes, some jokes about sexuality (I did say it was raunchy!), as well as some slapstick physical comedy. I did find myself at least chuckling at many of the gags. 

The kills are good for a movie like this. A lot of it is CGI assisted but it is done well enough and doesn’t linger on the screen so I’m okay with what I saw. It helps that the kills are clever and tie into the humor. In addition to a gnarly looking half blown off hand we also get several headshots, machete violence, and body parts flying. There is even a fun bit when we find out that the French hillbillies are cannibals which means we get to see them preparing their food aka. butchering victims. Not great special effects there but good enough.

Girls with Balls isn’t a classic or even a great movie. But it is solid and, in my opinion, some good harmless fun with cannibals and a body count. While I can’t imagine watching it again it was worth checking out the one time. If you have Netflix this is a perfect way to kill way to kill an hour or so. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

The Last Matinee (2020)

The movie opens during a rainstorm as we see a man sitting in his car popping some snacks out of a jar into his mouth before stepping into a theater to watch a movie. He is wearing black gloves and a nondescript raincoat, so Giallo fans know this isn’t going to end well. We also meet the other characters including some friends, a man with his date (who clearly has a weird agenda!), a young boy who snuck in, the manager, and a young lady who is covering for her father the projectionist.

With all the victims lined up the killer gets to work. Locking them in he goes one by one murdering folks as they watch the horror movie within the movie about a Frankenstein monster. The first couple of kills are sneaky and happen in the background or where no one can see them. But the film breaks causing the theater to fill with white light, and it is then that the bodies are seen. This sets the killer off and our survivors on the run. He keeps mowing them down as they first hide then fight back. Eventually the police are called and show up just in time to save the day. Though not before the movie hints that one of those who lived might be traumatized enough to maybe get to work themselves one day.

This feels like a Giallo with the look of the killer and the clear visual inspiration from some of those movies, especially the work of Dario Argento. But it also has a real slasher vibe to it. Less a mystery and more of a body count flick I still liked The Last Matinee. The killer turns out to be some random crazy who kills because he can and not for any particular reason or motivation. Though he does seem to like to pop their eyes out and keep them in a jar. Remember the snacks from before… apparently eyeballs is good eating!

The pacing of the movie is solid. It takes a few minutes setting up the folks in the theater and at establishes who they are so that it isn’t just faceless victims. This gives us just enough connection to the characters so that they at least feel like individuals which makes the proceedings easy to follow. Had they all blended together it would have made the story harder to follow. When the killings start the movie picks up the pace and we mostly get sequences of them sneaking around and hiding mixed in with chases with the occasional bloody murder tossed in for fun. This is one of the quicker ninety minute long flicks I’ve seen in a while. Basically it ended and I thought it was a very short runtime but nope I was just sucked in and having a blast.

snack time!

Speaking of the kills we get a very respectable eight kills. Okay technically nine, but I never count the murderer. There are a couple neck slashes including the “handy” girl (I did say earlier that she had an agenda, and it was a sleazy one!). A face gets smashed, someone gets stabbed brutally while screaming, a face goes into the mechanism of a projector, and someone exhales cigarette smoke thru a newly created orifice. My favorite is the rebar thru the kissing couple, which was a neat design. All these kills are done with practical effects work. If there is any digital assist I didn’t notice and I tend to not miss such things. If you like bloody kills you are going to have some fun with this one.

The Last Matinee is a neat Giallo/Slasher homage that has a cool setting and fun deaths. A lot of filmmakers have tried to make movies that call back to the classics but here they nailed it. I can’t ask for much more than that. I highly recommend this movie.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Return of the Killer Shrews (2012)

It must have been about thirteen years ago that I was interviewing actor James Best about his years on Dukes of Hazzard as well as his appearance in The Killer Shrews when he started talking about going into preproduction on this low budget sequel to the very low budget fifties original. I immediately jotted down that I should keep an eye out for the movie when it finally got made and released. I must have picked up this copy ten years ago or so and am just now getting around to watching it. I’ve already said this at least once but I really need to stop buying movies and taking a decade to watch them. 

Best returns as Captain Thorne Sherman. This time instead of delivering supplies to scientists on an isolated island he is dropping off cast and crew for a reality show. Now that is an interesting and appropriate update to the story! He is very uncomfortable returning to the place where he was almost shrew food but also apparently needs the paycheck. Almost as soon as they arrive we see a mysterious man controlling the shrews who get about to eating the filmmakers, though they don’t realize that until the next day.

When they find out folks are missing they go looking for them, which leads to those not killed right away being trapped in the old scientists’ compound from the first flick. The rest of the movie is them trying not to die, which admittedly doesn’t go so well, while mysteries such as who the man is as well as what the shrews have been up to get resolved. In the end some people die, some people live, and we get a fun continuation of a classic cheesy sci-fi monster flick most of us grew up watching on our local public domain creature feature shows.  

I want to start off being completely honest. I love the original movie, so I’m inclined to like this one. The cheesy special effects from the fifties with dogs in costumes chasing folks with pork chops in their pockets (a fun tidbit Best dropped during my interview with him so many years ago) is replaced by equally silly CGI. The digital effects work in Return of the Killer Shrews makes the worst Sci-Fi channel original look like a masterpiece so in addition to being silly it is really bad. Normally that would be a deal breaker for me, but as a sequel to a movie I love so much I found it hard to be too critical. 

The other complication I had was the fact that James Best was an awesome guy. My interview with him went so well and I have to say my interactions with him both before and afterwards made me a huge fan. He was a funny guy, which comes across in this movie. Much of it has him and another Dukes alum, Rick Hurst, cracking wise like they know they are in a cheesy movie. We even get John Schneider chewing up scenery as the start of the reality show so in a way it is a mini Dukes reunion. They really lean heavily into the jokes as this plays much more like a comedy rather than a creature feature. I found myself laughing along with the filmmakers rather than at them, so I think that made things a lot more fun. 

Admittedly though this isn’t a good movie. The CGI is terrible with the same crude digital models being used repeatedly for the shrews. That means you see the same random movements which many times doesn’t match up with the actors creating awkward composite shots. We do get some old school rubbery puppetry in a few of the closeups, but that isn’t nearly enough. They even double down with one of the worst “explosions” you will ever see in a movie. 

Not sure how I’m supposed to sum this one up. Personally, I liked this movie. But it is filled with things that normally bug me about low budget filmmaking. Clearly I’m digging this one for more than what just what is on the screen. Will other viewers have that same bias and connection to the cast as well as the original flick? Probably not. So, I can’t recommend this for everyone. That makes me more than a little bit sad. On the other hand, if you like James Best the actor or are a fan of The Killer Shrews you might get a kick out of this flick. I really do need to review that one for the site someday. 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Blood Bath (1966)

It has been a while since I’ve watched Blood Bath, but I remember thinking it was okay. This played on my local horror hosted shows in the seventies long before the fact it was co-directed by Jack Hill and produced by Roger Corman would have meant anything to me. Since I’m digging for some stuff to review in this years Halloween marathon it seemed like a good fit. 

The movie opens with a man talking to the painting of a woman. He is clearly not wrapped all that tightly. He begs for her to return to him and then the credits roll. Post opening credits we watch as another man stalks and kills a woman. We see his face and he has fangs so I suppose he must be a vampire. Then we see some annoying beatniks talking about their art. Here I was finally interested when I noticed frequent Corman collaborator Jonathon Haze as well as Sid Haig in small roles. Haig showed up in quite a few Jack Hill flicks so we have that connection as well. The beatniks are upset that their art doesn’t sell but folks are flocking in to buy the work of another artist, Sordi. His stuff is all about death. 

Here is when shit gets a bit weird. Sordi, played by another familiar face William Campbell, is a painter. In a bit of dialogue we find out that he is the ancestor of another painter who was killed, and his art destroyed. That picture from before is one of his paintings and somehow haunts Sordi. He paints and then kills ladies before tossing them into a vat of wax. Why does he do that when he is a painter? Not sure. The vampire is his ancestor who seems to come and go on his own. Initially I thought Sordi transformed into him but that never is explained. All I do know is that in the big finale all his previous victims in covered in wax come back to life and kill him. Wait… what the hell!

I have no idea what I was thinking or why I thought I liked Blood Bath. This movie is an absolute mess, but I guess it sort of makes some sense. Fans always want to act like Jack Hill and Roger Corman could do no wrong or at least they only talk about the good movies that they made. But both men were also not above making “product” for the drive-in market. Not worried so much about the quality and more about getting to that magical hour long runtime the second and third feature on a double/triple bill needed. If you could use footage from an earlier movie and cut some corners, then that was all the better. 

What we have here is a happy coincidence of actor William Campbell being available on the cheap and some footage to cut costs. When Corman was stuck with a movie he made in Yugoslavia named Operation Titian, a crime thriller with no supernatural elements, he reused some of the footage for this movie. That flick also starred William Campbell so they shot a few extra scenes with an American Cast, added in the beatniks and had another actor play a vampire. They stuck all they had together to hit that magical sixty two minute mark and viola you have a movie. 

Sadly, none of the footage works together and it feels like something that was assembled from ill-fitting pieces. I don’t want to act like this is padded out because I thought the stuff from Operation Titian looks cool (I will have to track that flick down someday to watch it) and the additional stuff with the beatniks has a fun Walter Paisley vibe to it. For those not in the know that last bit is referencing A Bucket of Blood from nineteen fifty nine which was another artist as a killer flick made by Corman. Plus, this is where we get to see Sid Haig, who has an actual role with dialogue! I would have loved to see an entire movie about those characters. The vampire stuff was lame though. Really this feels like three movies fighting against each other for my attention. 

Sometimes it was about the bottom line and not making a good movie for Roger Corman. Blood Bath is product meant to recoup some money from a failed project that initially couldn’t get much play. Knowing his ingenuity and reputation for making a profit I’m sure it worked. But as far as a movie this one isn’t worth your time.  

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Frostbitten (2006)

The movie kicks off during World War II with some German soldiers fighting in Ukraine. They end up spending the night in what they think is an abandoned farmhouse, but being a horror flick it clearly isn’t vacant. After the sun goes down something crawls out of the basement and starts to attack them. Though we don’t find out until later there is only one survivor. Before you get mad this isn’t a spoiler as it is pretty obvious what is going on. Anyway the action moves to the present day.

Dr. Wallen and her daughter Saga are moving to a small town in Sweden so that she can work at a hospital. She moved her daughter and herself to such an isolated place to work with Professor Beckert, who is doing genetic research. Once they arrive it becomes clear that things aren’t what they seem to be. First off, the professor is a bit weird and mysterious only having a single patient. Then there are the interns at the hospital that seem more interested in goofing around and taking drugs then they are their education. If that isn’t enough Saga gets invited by the cool girl in town, Vega, to a big party. Mysterious research, party drugs, and cool kids… how could that go wrong? Well it does and in a very entertaining and bloody way!

I’ve had this one in my “to watch” pile for a couple of years. I thought that with my annual Halloween movie review marathon in full swing it was time to check it out. I’m glad that I finally did so. Before I proceed, I want to acknowledge that this isn’t a perfect movie. It is low budget and that shows at times. The ideas and gags are also not terribly original but executed well enough to be fun.

The story is familiar but moves the action along briskly so that the ninety plus minute long running time flies by. I was impressed by the volume of characters in the movie and how well the story juggles them. In addition to Saga and her mother, whose plotlines veer off from one another before reconnecting, we also get some comedic stuff from a couple of cops on patrol. Many filmmakers toss too many characters into the mix and end up with a mess that is impossible to follow. Here they clearly had a well-defined script and stuck to it. If you have read my stuff here at all you know that I hate it when movies meander clearly not having a clue where to go next. With Frostbitten I was engaged from start to finish.

The party gets bloody

Visually this movie is stunning at times. With the setting of perpetual night along with how they light the interiors bleeding out all of the colors from the background this looks like a much more expensive flick. We also get a neat trick of seeing someone delivering flowers but in shadow, so it looks like something else is happening and an amazing shot pulling back out of the cabin thru the window and looking into the night sky. That last one was done with a CGI assist but is good enough and ambitious. The special effects work is solid and the vampires look decent. But be aware they mostly use digital to achieve this. The kills are sort of tame and there was a bit too much digital blood but overall the results are okay. Again with the resources they had I can cut them some slack.

My favorite gag has to be the talking dogs. In this movie’s universe when you go bloodsucker you can chat with your canine friends. They have a lot to say and are quite funny! If it isn’t obvious yet I enjoyed Frostbitten and am going to recommend it. I can’t find it streaming here in the states but there is a pricey DVD available. Not sure if I can recommend dropping thirty or forty bucks on it but if you can get your hands on it cheaper, I think that this one is worth a watch.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Huge Shark (aka. Red Water) (2021)

Shark movies have been popular lately or at least have been mined by filmmakers. This one kicks off with a couple of people on a rowboat spearfishing. How do you do that on a boat and not in the water? This isn’t the kind of movie where you ask logical questions. A shark shows up and eats them then we meet our main character, lady doctor. She has a name, but it doesn’t really matter much. Lady doctor is pretty and swims underwater. She also has a sister who is celebrating her birthday with her jerk boyfriend. Jerk boyfriend also brings along his boss, who is also pretty lady.

Are you with me so far? They go on a sailboat for a party. Sister is mad that jerk boyfriend invited lady boss along and acts like a child. This is how they all end up in the water when the shark shows up. They can’t get back on the sailboat, so they swim to a nearby abandoned rowboat. See how they tied the opening in? Well most of them do as sister is eaten offscreen right away. There is some dialogue that explains the drama of why lady boss was invited, and we find out that jerk boyfriend is a jerk. He gets eaten not long afterwards. Then lady boss shows her vulnerable side and becomes sympathetic and is eaten not long afterwards. Then lady doctor kills the shark. Movie over.

I did it again. I poked around streaming services looking for something I would likely regret watching and as it always does the internet provided. Here we have a movie that was made for Chinese television, or at least I think so. The information on this one is a bit sketchy so I had to piece things together from what I could find. Clocking in at only sixty-nine minutes long you would think that if nothing it at least wouldn’t be boring, but you would be wrong.

This Chinese knockoff simply copies other movies that have come out over the last few years. I suppose that is almost too much credit as a cash in when this is really a rip off of the Blake Lively flick The Shallows. Don’t believe me? The damn movie ends up with our heroine doing battle with the shark on a buoy/platform in the ocean. Sure here the main character is a diver instead of a surfer, but does it matter why you are in a wet suit? I think not. But like I’ve said many times while reviewing movies you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to make a fun flick. All you need to do is make it entertaining. Want to guess how well they do that with Huge Shark?

I’ve already hinted at the fact that his movie is painfully slow. Somehow despite being a shorter movie and lifting its entire story the filmmakers still manage to not have any meat on the bone. There is not tension as we always know when the shark is coming in for the attack. They literally show us it is coming! They also telegraph who is the next to die by either making them sympathetic or a complete ass right before they end up on the menu. This is the sort of thing that Deep Blue Sea pokes fun at with Samuel L. Jacksons exit in that flick. That is clever, this is just tedious. Toss in long stretches of dialogue to pad out the running time and you have the cure for insomnia.

The shark is CGI and despite them going cheap on the effects work we hardly get to see any of the attacks on the screen. When we do it is completely tame and disappointing. I will cut them some slack as I’m not sure what is allowed on Chinese television so that might not be their fault. But then they could have shot some more blood for a theatrical release since they had to know they were going to market here as a feature film. Then again that would have required some thought and effort to be put in and it doesn’t seem like that was something they thought about. If it isn’t obvious yet I’m not recommending this one.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer

Zombies of the Living Dead (2015)

I did it again. I was poking around the internet… this time Tubi TV… and found an independent zombie movie. Somehow I haven’t learned my lesson and thought to myself “how bad could this be?” Well my friends it could be very bad indeed.

There is a cop telling us what is happening in a voiceover. There is a science guy in his garage who figures out how to revive the dead using radio waves. This causes a zombie apocalypse and then the credits roll. Then we see a parking lot which is an establishing shot of a guy sitting in a cubicle… I mean radio station broadcasting about poodles being aliens. What the hell does this have to do with anything? Nothing at all. Then we are treated to a bunch of local businesses in establishing shots. Then some random attacks with characters that aren’t really characters as they appear long enough to die without ever being given names. Cool, I guess.

All the above happened at night. Then it is daylight and zombies are shuffling in front of the camera while folks are going about their business in the background. I mean couldn’t you have at least framed the scene so we don’t see someone loading groceries into their car during the apocalypse? I guess that was too much effort. Fifteen minutes in we finally meet our main character, the cop who has been narrating, as he bumps into and flirts with a girl named Mary. Some random shit happens while generic rock music blares over the dialogue. They run into some survivors, figure out that it is radio signals, go to the garage and unplug the equipment. Then inexplicably we find out that didn’t work and that the survivors are making a training video on how to survive.

I have to stop watching these movies. Clocking in a barely an hour long this movie clearly doesn’t have a script or any idea of what the story is supposed to be. It has the choppy feeling of something pieced together from random bits shot on various weekends until they could get it long enough to get away with charging people for it. Think about it we don’t even meet the main character or get to his story until a quarter of the movie, which is again an hour long, is over! It isn’t like that time is used to set the narrative up either. It is nothing but random characters getting attacked. After we meet the cop the rest of the movie is him and the others getting attacked at random locations. Really there is nothing going on here at all.

The special effects work is terrible. You get lots of CGI for the kills including the bane of low budget horror the fake blood on the screen effect as if it was sprayed on the backside of the television. Guys really this is just a dumb effect that never works. The zombies border from cheap ass white makeup from the costume shop to even worse plastic masks. Other technical bits to point out are the already blaring generic music, plastic cap guns as props, and audio that drops in and out during dialogue making it impossible to hear what the cast is saying. Though based on the lack of script I’m thinking that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Finally, there is a drive-in scene that looks like someone had a twenty year old copy of iMovie and a green screen. It is terrible.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know what some of you are already thinking to yourself. ‘John this is a low budget movie. Cut them some slack.’ Well first thing they are charging money so when you want people’s hard earned cash then you had better put some effort into your project. Second, and I’ll never stop beating this dead horse, make sure you have a story/script before grabbing the camera. A lack of budget is no excuse not to have a script ready to go. Not only that but make sure you have the resources to shoot whatever story you have on paper and if you don’t (the drive-in scene) then move off of it and go for something you can do. I also understand that this might have been going for laughs. Well nowhere the movie is listed is it categorized as a comedy and more importantly it isn’t funny.

Zombies of the Living Dead is a terrible movie and a prime example of someone tossing some crap at the wall and calling it a zombie flick. I don’t know why folks keep making these. I suppose there is some money to be made selling them. I mean I keep watching. Please don’t make the same mistake and stay far away from this turkey.

 

© Copyright 2023 John Shatzer